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One thing (among the many many things) that really nagged me about Hi-Fi is that the dealers don't even set up their speakers properly for a demo!
No, I'm not talking about setting them up perfectly to the nth degree. I'm talking about basic setup. Did anyone even bother to listen to the speakers at the sweet spot and notice there is no center image, no bass, and it just flat out doesn't sound good?
My experience today takes the cake: I auditioned the $80,000 Bang and Olufsen Beolab 90, and they had both speakers playing the left channel! I'm at a loss of words.
For such an expensive and innovative speaker, I expect an engineer to personally set it up and tune it to perfection so it'll blow away even the most discerning audiophile with the sound quality and their hallmark directivity control feature. Instead, what I heard was a speaker that couldn't produce a nice center image, even in the "narrow" (single sweet spot) mode. I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt that the calibration is wrong. After all, if they can screw up something as basic as playing mono, I wouldn't be surprised if it was calibrated incorrectly. There's no way these speakers can't image. It should be their strong suit.
On the bright side, the bass was astoundingly good, far better than any floorstanding speaker I've ever heard. Extremely tight, powerful, and deep. This is what I was expecting to hear, audio quality far better than anything I've ever heard, but in every aspect of speaker performance.
Then I went to another store, and I first listened to a pair of $5,000 Revel Performa F208 that the store just carried. The same thing happened. They had these in a separate listening room for high end equipments, yet they clearly never bothered to listen to it. Despite the massive size with two 8'' woofers, there was no bass below 80Hz. It sounded like a cheap Bluetooth speaker in the bass department. I could not believe how bad it sounded, because Revel is a very well respected brand. It wasn't because the Beolab 90 setting the bar too high, because I heard the Totem Hawk (which uses the 5'' Revelator woofer) right after in another room, and I was treated with some amazing Revelator bass.
How can dealers expect people to buy their speakers when they can't even set it up so that they don't sound bad? Ever wonder why Bose sells? Go listen to a demo in their dedicated demo room and tell me you're not blown away. There are rare experiences where I hear something crazy good and better than anything I've ever heard, and it gets etched in my memory. Bose managed to do that with their ****** sounding 2.5'' full range satellites during a demo.
If you can't pull off an incredible demo that puts the speaker in the best possible light, at least set them up so they don't sound bad!
No, I'm not talking about setting them up perfectly to the nth degree. I'm talking about basic setup. Did anyone even bother to listen to the speakers at the sweet spot and notice there is no center image, no bass, and it just flat out doesn't sound good?
My experience today takes the cake: I auditioned the $80,000 Bang and Olufsen Beolab 90, and they had both speakers playing the left channel! I'm at a loss of words.
For such an expensive and innovative speaker, I expect an engineer to personally set it up and tune it to perfection so it'll blow away even the most discerning audiophile with the sound quality and their hallmark directivity control feature. Instead, what I heard was a speaker that couldn't produce a nice center image, even in the "narrow" (single sweet spot) mode. I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt that the calibration is wrong. After all, if they can screw up something as basic as playing mono, I wouldn't be surprised if it was calibrated incorrectly. There's no way these speakers can't image. It should be their strong suit.
On the bright side, the bass was astoundingly good, far better than any floorstanding speaker I've ever heard. Extremely tight, powerful, and deep. This is what I was expecting to hear, audio quality far better than anything I've ever heard, but in every aspect of speaker performance.
Then I went to another store, and I first listened to a pair of $5,000 Revel Performa F208 that the store just carried. The same thing happened. They had these in a separate listening room for high end equipments, yet they clearly never bothered to listen to it. Despite the massive size with two 8'' woofers, there was no bass below 80Hz. It sounded like a cheap Bluetooth speaker in the bass department. I could not believe how bad it sounded, because Revel is a very well respected brand. It wasn't because the Beolab 90 setting the bar too high, because I heard the Totem Hawk (which uses the 5'' Revelator woofer) right after in another room, and I was treated with some amazing Revelator bass.
How can dealers expect people to buy their speakers when they can't even set it up so that they don't sound bad? Ever wonder why Bose sells? Go listen to a demo in their dedicated demo room and tell me you're not blown away. There are rare experiences where I hear something crazy good and better than anything I've ever heard, and it gets etched in my memory. Bose managed to do that with their ****** sounding 2.5'' full range satellites during a demo.
If you can't pull off an incredible demo that puts the speaker in the best possible light, at least set them up so they don't sound bad!
. All the local stereo shops probably rolled their eyes whenever they saw me walk in as a teenager, I used to love wandering into those places and drool over the equipment. I might need to run around Grand Rapids this Sunday and see what we have here now, I know a couple new ones have sprouted up recently, and Audio Advisor is in Grand Rapids but I don't think they have a showroom (online sales).
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